right hand pointing

St. Mary’s School

1959

 

It must have been the accumulation

of crimes that earned me the label bad boy,

because in October of the 4th grade

Sister Maria Richard had had it

with my shenanigans, and so she went

to the ditto machine and made 40

warm, smelly copies of the word boycott,

along with its definition, and she

handed them to the class as she explained

that this was what they were to do to me—

they were all to boycott me at recess.

But I sat alone on the steps of the

fire escape, and though they didn’t know,

I learned it too, and was boycotting them.